Is there really 'left wing' media bias?

[PrincessFiona]

This is an interesting question that we debated for the last two weeks in our house with our more conservative guests. We had on Fox news most of the week, peppered with CNN for comparions. What I noticed (keep in mind of course that it is just me doing the observing) is that Fox seemed to be doing a lot more 'cheerleading' kind of stuff while CNN was more 'critical' in terms of talking about policies, etc.

At the end of the day though, I found that there was no real coverage of the 'real' news by either channel when it came to anything potentially negative about the administration...

For example, this week, an ex-cia official (Paul Pillar)has come out and said that while he was there, intelligence (pre-iraq) was "cherry-picked", information has come out about george Deutsch and his attempt to censure NASA scientists due to administration orders... and Abramoff has admitted to meeting with Bush dozens of times. Libby has apparently admitted to having some information leaks pre-approved by Cheney before they were declassified and even republican Arlen Specter is taking a hard line now against the wiretapping hoo-ha.

If this had been a smoking cigar and a blue dress, you would hear it all day long...but these stories are all pretty hidden.

Is there a media bias that is protecting Bush?

kris

[PrincessFiona]

:>

apparently, i need some entertaining!

[DCJenn]

You know how I feel about this but what the heck- I'll jump into the fray-

Yes, there is a bias, but the bias is as right-wing as it is left. There's a great analysis of this that Al Franken did (ok, not exactly mainstream thinker, either) but his point was that most of the media outlets are owned by big business who will do whatever they can to spin the news to make BB look better.

You can't be human without a bias, it's impossible. When I was a journalism major (dropped because English majors needed more math than social work majors) our professors basically told us to dig and dig and dig. and that's the problem with today's 'news'. It's all because they're looking for soundbites not actually doing research. Which is partly the fault of the population who doesn't know how to read or critically analyze anything. Which gets back to why newspapers are losing subscribers. No one wants to take the time to figure it out for themselves, they want the soundbite and move on with the day.

Jenn

[rainbabies]

I haven't watched TV news in ages. Everything is "shocking' or "tragic' or "disturbing' and then they stick on 45 seconds at the end about how some puppy saved their owners by barking and waking them up before a giant fireball landed in the newborn's crib and the house exploded.

Mostly skim CNN and Yahoo news.

I'm listening to a lot more radio now. I about peed myself when I discovered that they actually have talk shows on the public radio here.

[SueC]

I agree absoutely with what jlorene said. I don't think there is this bunch of liberals that is running the show when it comes to the media, hollywood, etc. It is all about the bottom line and they cover and show what is going to bring in viewers and make more money. Capitalism at its finest!
Would they have called the media liberal when they couldn't stop talking about Clinton's indescritions?

[Rapunzel]

According to a well-run, unfunded (so as not to impart bias), scientific study run over the course of many years:

Yes, there is a definite liberal bias in the news media. Think what you want (and, I'd note that those with a liberal bias themselves don't seem to see this obvious liberal tilt in the media ) but the fact is that it is, indeed, there. It is there in the soundbites that happen to be chosen, it is there in the stories that are aired (as opposed to the stories that are not). It is there when a journalist shows his/her obvious bias in the story itself (as I have seen frequently - especially in Boston local news when I thought a local anchorwoman was going to pop a vein as she announced that Bush had been re-elected). To those of us with a more balanced view of events we see it constantly. And, it turns out, we're right:

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664

Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist


Date: December 14, 2005
Contact: Meg Sullivan ( msullivan@support.ucla.edu )
Phone: 310-825-1046



While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.

"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."

"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co‑author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.

The results appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which will become available in mid-December.

Groseclose and Milyo based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker's support for liberal causes. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tracks the percentage of times that each lawmaker votes on the liberal side of an issue. Based on these votes, the ADA assigns a numerical score to each lawmaker, where "100" is the most liberal and "0" is the most conservative. After adjustments to compensate for disproportionate representation that the Senate gives to low‑population states and the lack of representation for the District of Columbia, the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average U.S. voter.

Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo's method assigned both a similar ADA score.

"A media person would have never done this study," said Groseclose, a UCLA political science professor, whose research and teaching focuses on the U.S. Congress. "It takes a Congress scholar even to think of using ADA scores as a measure. And I don't think many media scholars would have considered comparing news stories to congressional speeches."

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

The most centrist outlet proved to be the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" and ABC's "Good Morning America" were a close second and third.

"Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets — Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill," Groseclose said. "If these newscasters weren't centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators."

The fourth most centrist outlet was "Special Report With Brit Hume" on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC's "World News Tonight" and NBC's "Nightly News" to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.

"If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox's 'Special Report' as ABC's 'World News' and NBC's 'Nightly News,' then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news," said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.

Five news outlets — "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," ABC's "Good Morning America," CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown," Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and the Drudge Report — were in a statistical dead heat in the race for the most centrist news outlet. Of the print media, USA Today was the most centrist.

An additional feature of the study shows how each outlet compares in political orientation with actual lawmakers. The news pages of The Wall Street Journal scored a little to the left of the average American Democrat, as determined by the average ADA score of all Democrats in Congress (85 versus 84). With scores in the mid-70s, CBS' "Evening News" and The New York Times looked similar to Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who has an ADA score of 74.

Most of the outlets were less liberal than Lieberman but more liberal than former Sen. John Breaux, D-La. Those media outlets included the Drudge Report, ABC's "World News Tonight," NBC's "Nightly News," USA Today, NBC's "Today Show," Time magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, NPR's "Morning Edition," CBS' "Early Show" and The Washington Post.

Since Groseclose and Milyo were more concerned with bias in news reporting than opinion pieces, which are designed to stake a political position, they omitted editorials and Op‑Eds from their tallies. This is one reason their study finds The Wall Street Journal more liberal than conventional wisdom asserts.

Another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom was that the Drudge Report was slightly left of center.

"One thing people should keep in mind is that our data for the Drudge Report was based almost entirely on the articles that the Drudge Report lists on other Web sites," said Groseclose. "Very little was based on the stories that Matt Drudge himself wrote. The fact that the Drudge Report appears left of center is merely a reflection of the overall bias of the media."

Yet another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom relates to National Public Radio, often cited by conservatives as an egregious example of a liberal news outlet. But according to the UCLA-University of Missouri study, it ranked eighth most liberal of the 20 that the study examined.

"By our estimate, NPR hardly differs from the average mainstream news outlet," Groseclose said. "Its score is approximately equal to those of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report and its score is slightly more conservative than The Washington Post's. If anything, government‑funded outlets in our sample have a slightly lower average ADA score (61), than the private outlets in our sample (62.8)."

The researchers took numerous steps to safeguard against bias — or the appearance of same — in the work, which took close to three years to complete. They went to great lengths to ensure that as many research assistants supported Democratic candidate Al Gore in the 2000 election as supported President George Bush. They also sought no outside funding, a rarity in scholarly research.

"No matter the results, we feared our findings would've been suspect if we'd received support from any group that could be perceived as right- or left-leaning, so we consciously decided to fund this project only with our own salaries and research funds that our own universities provided," Groseclose said.

The results break new ground.

"Past researchers have been able to say whether an outlet is conservative or liberal, but no one has ever compared media outlets to lawmakers," Groseclose said. "Our work gives a precise characterization of the bias and relates it to known commodity — politicians."

-UCLA-

[PrincessFiona]

I think there is just a 'bias' in general...wherever the media can create controversy, it will. I don't remember people screaming 'conservative media' everytime FoxNews picked on Clinton.....though I could be wrong.

Anyway...have you listened to the media reports of the whole UAE deal? FoxNews is talking about it like this is the best thing since sliced bread AND one of the 'commentators' this morning was talking about the civil war basically breaking out in Iraq. Fox News spin? A civil war would be a GOOD thing for the people of Iraq.

People see 'bias' where they want. My dad personally cheers on O'Reilly and Limbaugh as mainstream....even Ann Coulter seems moderate to him. Any reporting at all to the left of that is considered 'liberal'.

so....

I think the media tends to just go where they see a story, tbh.

kris

[Rapunzel]

This recent UAE port deal has made mighty strange bedfellows. People who are very liberal AND very conservative are up in arms over it. People who are very liberal AND very conservative don't see a problem with the entire affair. This particular issue has turned pigeon-holing on its ear. I don't know that I would term Foxnews bias in favor of this entire thing as "conservative" - especially since the vast majority of vocal conservatives in politics and the blog world seem to think this is a terrible idea. If anything, according to that reality, Foxnews could be considered to be taking the "liberal" stance on the issue. While CNN seems to be "siding" more with the conservatives on this one. Although I should point out that there are plenty of self-described liberals raging over this issue as well.

Like I said, this subject has flipped things topsy-turvy so I don't know that it's a very good description of bias one way or another in media.

Foxnews is actually NOT as liberal as places such as CNN. BUT it still has a very liberal stance. The difference with Fox is not the reporting per se but that it has a fairly equal distribution of op-ed programs on both sides of the fence. And, that's about it. Otherwise, if you polled Foxnews reporters, you are statistically likely to find the vast majority of them to be Democrats and/or "liberal" politically and socially (according to recent statistics that found most reportersin the national media fall within those categories).

[Rapunzel]

I think the media tends to just go where they see a story, tbh.

I disagree with this. I think bias is shown by which stories are chosen. For instance, take the entire Dan Rather fiasco (the latest one - his entire career, of course, being littered with fiascoes). Dan Rather made blatantly biased, untrue statements on-air and he and his producer created a story based entirely upon their political leanings. The only thing that stopped the guy was the immediate and vocal reporting of internet blogs. His reporting had an agenda.

The book Bias by Bernard Goldberg actually documents many instances of this type of behavior in the national media. From altering statistics to blatantly disregarding stories the liberally-tilted media has engaged in propaganda for decades. Of course, these biased reporters do not see it as such since they believe their views are the "norm" and their bias prevents them from seeing other points of view as entirely rational and worthwhile.

There are numerous websites and blogs now that do an outstanding job of documenting the bias - both overt and covert - that comes out in media stories via the words chosen, the manner in which a story is presented, the stories that are chosen vs. the ones that are ignored. The vast majority of these sites are going to be pointing out liberal biases because, as has been documented now, the vast majority of the biases in the national media are, well, liberal ones.

[SueC]

I just can't buy into this theory that the liberals are the ones running things, media or otherwise. If that were the case, would we still be calling "W" president? I watch the news here in KC and I often pick up on a conservative bias on the part of the person delivering the news. I guess unless we want the news to be reported by robots, there will always be slants one way or the other.

[PrincessFiona]

I think Goldberg had his own agenda.

Foxnews is actually NOT as liberal as places such as CNN. BUT it still has a very liberal stance. The difference with Fox is not the reporting per se but that it has a fairly equal distribution of op-ed programs on both sides of the fence. And, that's about it. Otherwise, if you polled Foxnews reporters, you are statistically likely to find the vast majority of them to be Democrats and/or "liberal" politically and socially (according to recent statistics that found most reportersin the national media fall within those categories).

?!?

Equal distribution? Fox news is ridiculous. They're practically cheerleaders for the Bush2 presidency. As for there op-ed pieces being balanced, I'd like you to prove it. Hannity and Colmes? It's the Sean Hannity show with Colmes there for someone to be picked on. I have no idea the political leanings of the reporters on Fox news, but to suggest that the station's on-air presentation is anything but staunchly pro-war, pro-Bush seems ludicrous to me. Are we watching the same station?!?

[PrincessFiona]

I agree, Monkey.

Yesterday, all day, I heard only about what a good thing the port deal with the UAE would be, what racists we are for thinking otherwise AND that it is GOOD news that there is now civil war breaking out in Iraq (which....was a concern that the world had brought up before we even went into Iraq that was poopood by the administration) because now they would have the 'opportunity' to be independent. huh? Even better is how they talk about Katrina and the aftermath and how committed the administration was and is to rebuilding.

Why, then is not more being done?

O'Reilly, Colmes, and the whole ED and the morning gang are indeed like little Bush Admin cheerleaders.

I've yet to hear a critical word about any policy coming from Fox.

CNN isn't more 'liberal'...they just also report the bad and the good.

Larry King needs to retire (oh PLEASE!) but Lou Dobbs, for example, pretty much reports on the issues. I have heard him praise a Bush policy or explain why it isn't bad...and I've heard him slam something.

MSNBC now is a different story. Keith Olbermann is just good old-fashioned Bush bashintainment.

my .02

kris

[Rapunzel]

So, are you all disputing the findings of the study?

Is there non-anecdotal evidence to the contrary of this study?

Going to the anecdotal evidence mentioned previously: The Hannity and Colmes show is, I believe, a grand total of an hour or so a day. Is that incorrect? I've watched the show before and, yes, Hannity definitely dominates that program. But, as I said the difference between Fox and CNN is that there are editorial programs with a definite conservative tilt to balance out the predominance of both editorial programs and "normal" news with a decidedly liberal tilt.

And, it's not just editorial programs where you see a tilt - the point is that in the everyday, supposedly "factual" reporting there is a serious bias towards the "left". Apparently the majority of journalists being Democrats and/or self-described liberals means that the majority of our news will be reported with that bias. The study I quoted really just provides a factual basis for that bit of commen sense (because, as someone mentioned, pretty much ALL "reporting" will have a bias of some sort - and the bias is based upon the reporters' and producers' own world views and opinions).

Again, according to this study the news programs DO have a definite, over-arching "liberal" bent - in the AVERAGE news programs as well (not necessarily just the admittedly editorial programs). Is there any scientifically collected information that says otherwise? Just because you don't like reality doesn't mean reality isn't there....